Survey: Do most women take their husband’s last name? And will future brides?
In a time when many people are delaying marriage, driving the age at first marriage up for both men and women, when a growing number of people are foregoing marriage completely and the share of couples who cohabit has grown, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed much.
Despite those changes in U.S. marriage patterns, most women in opposite-sex marriages took their husband’s last name.
But nearly a fourth of women who have never married say they’re not sure what they’ll choose for a married surname in the future, and the number who say they’ll take their husband’s last name is less than half of what it is among those who are already married.
That’s according to a report by Pew Research Center’s Luona Lin that finds nearly 4 in 5 women adopted their husband’s last name when they married. Among those who didn’t, 14% kept their own last name and 5% hyphenated both names.
The pattern of a woman adopting her husband’s name held true across generations, including younger women 18 to 49 years old, said Juliana Horowitz, Pew Research Center associate director of research, whose expertise includes demographics and social trends.
Study details
The survey included 2,437 U.S. adults in opposite-sex marriages who were asked if they kept their last name or changed it when they married. Pew Research Center also surveyed 955 adults without regard to sexual orientation who had never been married about how they would handle their surname if they were to marry in the future. The survey is part of a larger survey conducted April 10-16.
Of women who never married, who were asked what they think they’ll do if they ever wed, 33% said they will follow tradition and change their last name to their mate’s. Twenty-three percent said they’ll likely keep their last name, and 17% will hyphenate both last names. Around 24% said they have not decided what they will do about a surname if they marry.
Horowitz said people often don’t know what they would actually do when the time comes, but those who have never married tend to be younger.
“It will be interesting to continue to ask this question maybe a few years down the road, to see what happened to those who aren’t sure and do we in fact have a different breakdown,” she said. “These things, I think, change very slowly so it will be interesting to see what actually happens to these never-married women.”
The report notes that men sometimes take the option of changing their last name in opposite-sex marriages, though the share is small. While 92% kept their last name, 5% took their spouse’s last name and fewer than 1% hyphenated the two surnames.
Among never-married men, 73% said they will likely keep their last name should they marry in the future, while 20% weren’t sure. Just 4% said they’ll hyphenate both names, while 2% said they will assume the last name of their spouse.
The sample included too few same-sex marriages to analyze the naming decisions that are already made, Pew said.
Questions about adopting a spouse’s name, keeping one’s own or hyphenating are part of a larger survey coming out next week that asked about views on the changing American family, Horowitz said.
Who kept her own name?
The report notes differences in which married women did or didn’t assume their husband’s surname. The share was still small, but twice as many young married women, ages 18 to 49, kept their own last name, compared to those 50 and older, at 20% vs. 9% in opposite-sex marriages.
Just over 1 in 4 women with a postgraduate degree kept their last name when they married. Among those with a bachelor’s degree, 13% kept their own name, as did 11% of those with some college or less.
Related
Democratic- and Democratic-leaning women are twice as apt as their counterparts on the Republican side of the aisle to report they did not change their last name when they married (20% vs. 10%). Moderates in the parties are about equally likely to say they kept their own last name, while 25% of liberal Democratic women kept their own name, as did 7% of conservative Republicans.
There are also differences based on race.
Per the Pew report, 3 in 10 Hispanic women kept their own last name, compared to 10% of white women and 9% of Black women.
Black women are more likely to say they hyphenated their own and their husband’s last name, compared to white women. White women are the most likely racial group to say they adopted their husband’s last name.
Pew reported it didn’t analyze demographic differences among women who had never married because the sample was not large enough to break it down that way.
